No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.
—Hannah Arendt, 1958Quotes
Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
—Walter Bagehot, 1863Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1787Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1944I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843